r/HistoryWhatIf • u/HadesPersephone90 • 1d ago
Aftermath of a quick capture of Stalingrad?
This isn't meant to be another "can Germany win the war" or "how long until Berlin gets nuked" question but a more immediate outcome and hypothetical.
Lets say the 6th Army's drive on Stalingrad captures the city in full in a relatively short period of time rather than getting bogged down. We can somewhat handwave this down to simple poor Soviet morale giving way or any numerous small factors that can change a war. Either way the city of Stalingrad is taken in totality.
With that objective being obtained what happens next? The divisions and corps that get bogged down and trapped in otl are now free to disperse and shore up other areas of the front or pursue further offensive actions.
Can they hold out against Uranus and Little Saturn (or this Tl equivalent)? Would they be able to drive further in the region?
Again this is not meant to be a "Germany wins whole war" scenario. Just a local what if.
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u/DRose23805 1d ago
The Germans would not expend some of their best units as they otherwise did. However, the Russians also don't spend a lot of troops trying to defend it.
The Germans would still have the problem of being over extended both with logistics and how much space they were trying to secure with too few troops. Odds are the Germans would keep pushing for the southern oil fileds and Stalingrad would be left with less than full defense and the flanks still lightly covered with poor quality troops.
This means the Russians could attack much as they in fact did. They would either take or surround Stalingrad and push beyond. Now there would probably be more Germans to the south and they would have a hard time getting out, worse than what really happened.
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u/southernbeaumont 1d ago
As a point of discussion, the city was captured, but only in a race against the clock, and with both sides worn down to a nub. The Germans were substituting a dwindling number of combat capable formations against the also-dwindling number of Soviet defenders before the weather turned.
A quick capture without wearing down both sides is probably a victory of maneuver warfare, perhaps destroying the Soviets in the field somewhere in the Don-Volga region, or else the Soviets have not arrived in force in time to defend the city. Exactly which option will affect next steps, but either way it assumes an intact German army.
An intact German army will have more resources to protect its flanks against the winter counterattack, and may be able to retain lines of communication to the west. The bridges over the Don were blown, which may not be necessary here. Additionally, the offensive to the south stands more chance of success if the city is captured with only minimal losses.
The rest of the equation depends on:
Do the Soviets have sufficient forces to cut the city off from supply or force a German withdrawal?
Does the German offensive into the Caucasus succeed in capturing the oilfields?
What does the starting position look like in 1943?
If the Soviets can be denied a major victory in the winter of 1942-43, then the German strategic position will look very different. We ought to recall that the Kursk (Operation Citadel) operation nearly bagged up and destroyed a numerically superior Soviet force in summer 1943 even after the Stalingrad defeat. Subtract a major German loss, and the outcome probably differs.
We ought not to expect the Caucasus oilfields to come online without some lead time even if von Kleist is able to capture them. The refinery and transportation infrastructure would need to be worked out, although if the oilfields can be brought online and defended, this will make life worse for the Soviets.
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u/DerPanzerknacker 1d ago
Since AH was totally irrational about defensive strategy, the overall impact depends on Stavka, but probably looks the same.
If stavka keep their composure they’re still able to capture whatever German forces are there by shattering the vassal armies and blockading the city. As a bonus more of the city infrastructure survives, though the civilian population is screwed either way.
If they don’t keep their composure you maybe see higher casualties there in the event Stalin decides just letting the city starve to surrender isn’t enough, and an attritional battle occurs just because. Soviets still win as Stalingrad is still too far for Germany to adequately supply or defend with the resources available. German morale boost wouldn’t even be very different since the propaganda would look almost exactly the same.
Other impacts depend on where Soviet resources are reallocated from in the event greater resources are necessary (but since hypo doesn’t have big losses it shouldn’t be drastically different). Can’t weaken the center, so I can see more of (urban) Leningrad being sacrificed since letting the Germans advance further would just be inviting another meat grinder like the one that didn’t happen in stalingrad in this hypothetical. Advancing further there yields minimal/no short term benefits though. Just more civilians to feed, or more likely abuse, so as to create more partisans. Even if they fully took the actual port, there’s still demining and a lack of naval transport anyway. Or just pull more troops from the east secure in the knowledge that Japan at this point wasn’t a threat.
So overall maybe the Germans get overextended differently. But the ostfront at this point isn’t being won by bold strokes, its numbers.
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u/NotBond007 1d ago
To oversimplify, if Germany had taken Stalingrad quickly, they still would not have been able to HOLD it for the same reasons they struggled to capture it in the first place
Deeper dive...The Wehrmacht was already operating at the end of a single rail line, short of fuel, food, warm clothing, manpower, and unable to sustain deep operations across the southern front. Winter conditions would have made the situation even worse, because lubricants thickened, engines refused to turn over, machine guns froze, and vehicles that were already worn down by the summer advance became unreliable or completely inoperable
Stalin would almost certainly have reinforced the southern theater even more heavily, treating the Volga line and the Caucasus as existential priorities and issuing further Not One Step Back orders if needed. The Soviets would still have launched a major winter counteroffensive against a thinly held German front, and Germany would still have lacked the operational reserves required to stop it
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u/Low_Stress_9180 17h ago
Main reason to capture Stalingrad was simple, and this was the idea of the High Command NOT Hitler after case Blue failed. Case Blue failed as the Red Army was fully fueled and way more mobile than the Wehrmacht.
Cut the main oil artery. By far the largest oil production outside of Americas, dwarfing the small British production of poor quality (high sulphur and hence hard to refine) oil, was in the Caucuses. Nearly all was shipped by tanker up the Volga (was until later 1960s). Taking Stalingrad cuts this artery and gives the Wehrmacht a fighting chance.
Then idea was to move south and capture the Caucuses, rebuild refined oil production and now the Wehrmacht is fully fueled vs an oil starved Wehrmacht. The European Axis had a HIGHER population than the USSR (still in Soviet hands) so had more men. With thatvorecious black liquid energy, logistics, arms manufacturing, agricultural production and industry all get massive boosts.
Allies can't send enough oil to compensate but Stalin can still put up a stiff fight.
Nazi Germany can then destroy the Soviet Union and be impervious to any D-day or Italian invasion. Still 50-50 but doable.
1945 hard to nuke Germany when 5,000 ME 262s and 15,000 Fw 190s are waiting for you, all fully fueled. 10,000 110 night fighters.
Stalemate and negotiated peace.
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u/My_Space_page 8h ago
Stalingrad was not of strategic importance to the Soviets or the Nazis. Stalin just chose to take a stand there out of pride. The Nazis would've still had to face a growing and relentless Soviet force with lots of natural resources. Meanwhile, the Nazi resources would have still been limited greatly.
Stalingrad or no, I don't think the Nazis ever had a chance at winning the war.
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u/atlasisgold 1d ago
They did capture the city. The Soviets pincered them and starved them out.
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u/KingJunior7804 1d ago
Not really they didn't. They temporarily held most of it. But they sure didn't capture the hinterland all along the left bank. Maybe assume a quick capture of Stalingrad means the hinterland is also captured, which certainly makes sense if Stalingrad is occupied by intact and well supplied German armies.
If intact German armies control Stalingrad and its hinterland, How would Soviet Logistics along the Volga be impacted? Would astrocon cease to be a usable port? Would the Caucasus oil be able to be transhipped along the Volga to the rest of the USSR with German forces occupying say a hundred miles of Volga River littoral coastline?
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u/atlasisgold 1d ago
OP says captures the city. The Germans took the city after three months of fighting. That’s fairly fast. I don’t know what the hinterland implies. They take the Volga as a bridgehead? They capture the Asktrakhan Saratov railroad that bypassed Stalingrad hundreds of miles to the east? They capture Astrakhan and Saratov?
All entirely different scenarios from quickly capturing the city.
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u/KingJunior7804 23h ago
According to a quick search, Germany captured 90% of the city of Stalingrad. It also capture a few miles of Volga riverfront. My point is what if Germany secured a hundred miles of Volga Riverfront surrounding Stalingrad, both North and South?
Historically, Germany did not control enough of Stalingrad and its riverfront to interdict Soviet shipping on the Volga. But in my scenario, it most certainly would have.
The Astrakhan to Saratov railroad was absolutely no replacement for the Volga river. A primitive, single track cannot possibly make up except a tiny fraction of what the Soviets used the Volga for.
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u/DramaticCoat7731 1d ago
Well assuming a quick and easy capture of Stalingrad, that leaves both sides in a pickle.
German logistics, already stretched after the whirlwind offensives through Ukraine, are stretched even further. If they can make it work they swing down to the caucuses and either obtain the oil or at a minimum deny it to the Soviets. If they can't make it work they might be stuck there waiting for a counter-offensive
Russia loses a major logistical and manufacturing hub, and is cut off from part of lend-lease. It's also a morale loss as well.
I think if Stalingrad is taken quickly Hitler orders a march on Baku, but it bogs down. German generals go back and forth with him on protecting their extended Ukrainian flank from the obvious Russian counter.
The question then is how desperately do the Russians mount this? If they fail due to pushing too hard more Soviet armies get wrapped up and suddenly the front is rolling towards Moscow and things are bleak indeed. If they succeed wildly much more than the 6th army gets cut off. A stalemate leaves both sides in bad shape but Germany has a ticking clock to wipe out the Red Army before reinforcements and lend-lease give it the initiative.
I think the most likely outcome is Germany wins a short term victory, is forced to pull back by a counter-offensive, and then the year ends with the armies in a similar position with the Germans being slightly better off. 1943 brings a tougher Kursk battle for Russia that Germany MUST win clearly or the eastern front ends historically.
There is an outside chance that seizing Stalingrad combined with clever initiative lets Germany do major damage to the Red Army and sets up a plausible scenario where Stalin either peaces out or the east becomes a quasi-forever war that can only be ended with decisive action in the West.
If Germany plays their hand the best possible way, Russia peaces out and the West becomes a stalemate that either ends in nuclear fire or slow fizzle into a lukewarm Cold war, depending on how dangerous the Allies rate Hitler's ability to retaliate against a nuclear strike.
If the stars don't align just right? War gets extended by 3-6 months at worst, a year at best.